Four Months with Remote Year and a Proposal in Bangkok, Thailand

Those of you expecting my post and video from the ramen and wine spa, and;

Those of you expecting Auroville, Part II.

I promise, those will be my next two blogs.

For those of you who are disappointed that they aren’t reading a ramen blog or watching a wine spa video, I am sorry, I’m working on it. Look at the current fruits of my novice-video-editing labors:

What did that one person say? Stick to what you know? Read on…

It’ll only take me another 256 days to finish that seven or eight minute video.

Now that we are past that, it’s time for me to write about what’s going through my head at this very moment. I am currently sitting in my office.

This is my office today.

It’s not this clean.

This was my office for the past four months. Seven countries.

I stopped counting at 100,000 miles traveled.

It’s hard to describe quite how I feel about this truncated turn of events. Being able to work remotely is a dream upon a dream.

You see, I have just spent four months and a week or so traveling through seven countries in Asia and Australia.

And what happens at the end of this epic adventure? I propose to my partner of four years.

Check that out here in this video:

I Am Me

I feel egotistical somehow, not humble, as though this shouldn’t be about me. That I shouldn’t be writing about this incredible experience and share my thoughts about it.

But I am… I am going to do it. And I don’t care who cares or who doesn’t care. Who reads it or who doesn’t. I am me.

Not only have I been on the greatest adventure of my life, with some truly amazing people, a new family, but I have transitioned to a new state in my relationship, all while returning home to evaluate what might be next.

The fact is, I type way faster than I write (thanks, modern technology) and this is going to be my journal.

Not Facebook, which I get nothing from but social capital, but this, my blog, Floppy fucking Hat Adventures, dammit, whatever the hell that means.

Welcome to my Journal

I am going to save what I write here. I am going to print out copies of it (on recyclable non-tree-killing paper, of course) and hug those copies to my bosom. I am going to dig them into a hole in the ground so that the earth can take my words and they will live forever…

This is going to be my digital diary. What the hell am I paying WordPress for this website for, anyway?

So, here I am. I am home. I am engaged to the man I love.

Yet, I have had this taste of adventure with these amazing people who – like myself – are adventurers. We are travelers.

We are the ones who would get on the spaceship if given the choice. This was the group of people I started with.

Kublai 2017 – Remote Year – The Originals

I started with them on a program called Remote Year. It’s meant for people who can, well, work remotely – hence the name.

The program is designed for people traveling for one year, but if you balk at the full year when the recruiter offers you the spot, they’ll offer you four months.

They offered me four months when I told them Brandon and I wouldn’t be apart for a year.

#SorryNotSorry

So, here they came back with four months. And in Asia, to boot, where I had never been. Brandon reluctantly agreed. He still wasn’t happy.

There is a video of him somewhere crying while I taped him. I will spare of him of posting it here. He would be mad at me. But here’s a picture of what it looked like:

He wasn’t happy.

Anyway, I have just returned from that journey. From January 29th through May 30 I was away.

So, how do I feel? What do I do?

I can tell you this, I have been bitten. I was bitten by the travel bug. Not these bites that came from a jungle spider feasting on my foot as I lay peacefully sleeping in a hammock at the edge of the Cambodian Caribbean and landed me in a Phnom Penh hospital, but more of the metaphorical kind.

Yeah, two more days and I would have lost a toe.

I was bitten 16 years ago when my mom took me overseas for the first time, to England. Check out those lovely shots. That first one is of me shearing a sheep as a sheep dog looks on. The second is of the castle that just happened to be nearby.

That wool I sheared? I still own the jacket to this day that the wool went into. Brandon is not convinced it’s the same wool.

I think it is. Even though they must have somehow dyed it and processed it into a jacket all in the two hours we were on the tour. Okay, maybe not the same wool.

As a matter of fact, it looks sort of gray. Have I washed it in 16 years?

The wool jacket I still own, draped ungraciously over another jacket over a chair.

Anyway, the point is, I got the travel bug. I’ve always had it. At the same time, I have the love bug. And I have found it, in this man.

Beauty, personified

When I left the country, I had not yet decided to propose. I wanted to see what being apart was going to be like; what it was going to do to our relationship. One of two things happens when you are apart from the one you love:

You drift away or yearn to stay.

I yearned to stay.

Yet at the same time, the thirst for adventure… the traveler in me… it awoke.

So now, I sit here, back in this office.

I’m still ashamed to show the real picture.

Wondering what will be next. What will Floppy Hat Adventures do?

Can I really make money on a YouTube Channel and blog?

Should I try something new?

Can Brandon and I do something together? Can I afford for him and I to travel together and should he leave his job?

Where am I pointing?

Why is “the adventure is life?”

Do I continue making videos or just write? Or do something else entirely?

What does the Floppy Hat have to do with it? Have to do with it? What’s the Floppy Hat but a second-hand emotion?

So many questions.

But I know this one thing. This is what I will end it on.

My life became so much richer since Brandon Washington entered it. Every year has eclipsed the last, and I have NO DOUBT that 2018 and the years beyond, should we exert control over our own destiny, will continue to be as epic as the years before.

He may not have been happy in the last pic he cried in, but he sure was happy in this one, four long months later.

He was happy.

I am really excited, even if I have no idea what’s in store for the future. Is that not what life is all about?

Enjoy your moment even as you build the next. For none are promised to you.

Post navigation

1 Comment

Will, this will always be a forever memorable moment in my mind. The look on Brandon’s face, you walking out through all of us that were dancing, the celebration that followed….all of it was beautiful. Blessed to have met you, friend. Looking forward to seeing you soon.